GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate enacted — over Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto — a bill barring medical professionals from providing hormone therapy, puberty-blocking drugs and surgical gender-transition procedures to anyone under 18, with limited medical exceptions.
Republican Sen. Joyce Krawiec, primary sponsor of the bill restricting gender-affirming care, said the state has a responsibility to protect children from receiving potentially irreversible procedures before they are old enough to make their own informed medical decisions. Earlier, the Senate and House voted minutes apart to override another Cooper veto of a bill limiting LGBTQ+ instruction in the early grades, also making that law. The measure requires public school teachers in most circumstances to alert parents before they call a student by a different name or pronoun. And the law also bans instruction about gender identity and sexuality in K-4 classrooms, which critics have previously likened to a Florida law opponents call “Don’t Say Gay.
“The legislature finally comes back to pass legislation that discriminates,” he said, adding it would have several negative impacts for North Carolina. “Yet they still won’t pass a budget when teachers, school bus drivers and Medicaid Expansion for thousands of working people getting kicked off their health plans every week are desperately needed.”″
“I have felt like I had a lump in my throat for months,” Waugh said. “Just talking to other families who are dealing with this, I mean, the pain that they are feeling, the suffering, the fear for their children — it’s devastating.” A former Olympic swimmer, Rep. Marcia Morey, had spoken in House floor debate before the vote about possible repercussions for young athletes.